Biographical notes

Anais was born in Neuilly, just outside Paris. She spent her childhood in various
parts of Europe until, when she was eleven, her father, Spanish composer Joaquin Nin,
abandoned his family. In the same year, her French-Danish mother,
Rosa Culmell, took Anais and her two sons to New York. On the boat that brought Anais away from Europe and from her father she
began to write
her journals. In 1923 she married Hugo Guiler, who had studied literature and economics and had acquired
a good position in an international bank, allowing them to live comfortably.

The couple moved to Paris in 1924. There they lived in various
appartments, among them
a beautiful house in Louveciennes, but Anais also often had a studio for herself and
lived in a houseboat on the Seine for a while.
In Paris she and Hugo supported various avant-garde artists, among them
Henry Miller with whom Anais started an affair and exchanged hundreds of letters. The book A literary passion
includes a great number of the letters these two artists exchanged over the years and provide an interesting documentary of
their struggle for recognition as writers as well as their relationship.

Anais moved back to New York just before the outbreak of World War II. After a turbulent time in
New York she divided her life
between New York and Los Angeles, between Hugo and Rupert, a much younger lover and friend.
From being a cult figure of the early feminist movement, Anais later rose to international
prominence with her writing. She is best known for her diaries but also produced a
number of novels and a prose poem in surrealistic style as well as wonderful erotic short stories,
published posthumously. Characterized by the use of powerful and, at times,
disquieting imagery, her work reveals great sensitivity and perception.

In 1973 she received an honorary doctorate from Philadelphia College of Art.
She was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1974.

If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever,
then I will never know happiness.
For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.
-Anais Nin